


Gonna Come Back to You One by One

by vials



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Alex has a messed up way of loving people what can I say, Angst, Character Study, F/M, Gen, M/M, Missing Scene, title is from a mountain goats song if you want to know what you're in for, warnings for brief homophobia but they regret it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 06:27:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29255952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vials/pseuds/vials
Summary: Raskolnikov felt sick but he couldn't say why, when he saw his face reflected in his victim's twinkling eye. Some things you'll do for money, and some you'll do for fun, but the things you do for love are going to come back to you one by one.A look at all the things Alex Kralie has done for love, misguided or otherwise.
Relationships: Alex Kralie/Amy Walters, Alex Kralie/Jay Merrick
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	Gonna Come Back to You One by One

**1.**

There had always been a rage in Alex Kralie. It was something that the adults in his life noticed quickly; something that his mother almost seemed to delight in, at the beginning. Her husband couldn’t quite understand why. Who wanted – or needed – a kid with anger issues? But Alex’s weren’t so straightforward as that. For the most part he had it under control, and it would be a theme of his life that only those who knew him best would know when an explosion was imminent. As he grew older that privileged group consisted of his grandparents and his sister; once he hit school, Brian Thomas also became an adept hand at spotting the warning signs.

The thing about Alex was that he didn’t subscribe to one kind of rage. The type that so obsessed his mother – the sudden outpouring of violence – was the obvious type, and it was much rarer. The rage that Alex kept close to him was much quieter, and it had a dangerous moral compass. There was, his grandmother had always said, nothing more dangerous than evil committed in the name of love, and Alex was the walking proof of that sentiment.

**2.**

When Alex found out that the Johnson girls had been tormenting his sister for months upon months, he was eleven years old and his sister was ten. The Johnson girls – Amelia and Charlotte, or Lia and Lottie to their friends (of which they inexplicably had many) – had a slightly larger age gap, Amelia being ten and Charlotte being thirteen. The Johnson family was well-off and lived in a nice area, though not so well-off and in such a nice area as the Kralies, and Katherine Kralie often hypothesised that this was the reason that the family had always been so darn snooty with them.

Andrea Kralie was a tall and gangly girl. She was not very feminine in her presentation, and half of her wardrobe consisted of clothing from Alex that he had rapidly outgrown or had just given to her because she had liked it. She didn’t see the point in dressing up for school, and at home she was much happier tramping about in the wilderness with her brother; she spent her days in baggy T-shirts and khaki shorts, sometimes with a hoodie for the cooler weather. Like her brother she wore glasses, though ones with much larger frames than him. It suited her, in an odd way, but she did look like a nerd from a seventies high school movie. She knew this, of course – in fact it was the very look she was cultivating, thank you very much – but school is a cruel place and girls are often much nastier than boys. Like her brother she had a force of personality that appealed to people, and she had no problem making friends. Unfortunately, those friends all lived closer to the school than she did, and the Johnson family lived further down the same road. The walk back from the bus was therefore a battleground, and with Alex often going back home with friends or staying behind for after school activities, Andrea found herself frequently walking the gauntlet alone.

It was another student who tipped Alex off to what was going on. The Johnson sisters were smart about what they were doing, in the often impressive way that children can be very clever about how they hurt one another. They wouldn’t target Andrea all the time – or at least not openly. Truth be told she wasn’t much bothered about having things thrown at her on the bus, or the sniggering and comments as she passed. What did she care? Andrea Kralie had grown up with thick skin. She had to, with a brother like Alex, who was never afraid to say what he really thought. The Johnson girls were eager for their entertainment, though, and as anyone who has been bullied will know, ignoring them only makes it worse.

The first time they had done something especially cruel, they had managed to wrestle her backpack off her. Then they had thrown it around until it had inevitably landed in the small creek at the side of the shortcut through the woods, ruining a good half of what was inside before Andrea had managed to fish it out. Some of her textbooks were swollen with water, drying wrinkled, and at the end of the school year she would get into trouble for it. Most devastatingly, she had had her sketchbook in there. Thankfully only a few pages of it had been filled, because it was new, but those pages had still been ruined and the blank pages were all waterlogged. Andrea had shoved the sketchbook far under her bed, too upset to look at it, not wanting to ever talk about it.

Things has escalated rapidly after that, and Andrea told herself that she didn’t tell anybody because she could deal with it. Deep down she knew it was because she was embarrassed, as is the nature of a lot of bullying – it seemed so ridiculous to get upset about it, and she could only imagine what her mother would do. Katherine Kralie liked to feel righteous; no doubt she would march right down to the school, demand a meeting with the parents, the works. Andrea didn’t think it was worth the torture. Next year Charlotte would be going to high school, and Andrea knew for a fact that Amelia would not be half as confident without her older sister there.

The student who finally told Alex what was going on – a twelve-year-old by the name of Benjamin Barton – lived partway down the same route, and went mostly unnoticed due to the fact that he attended another school. Despite this he recognised both Andrea and Alex Kralie, as the two of them had a friendship group that via friends of friends or siblings of friends stretched into several of the area’s schools; it just so happened that Alex’s school and Ben’s school were working on a joint production of _My Fair Lady_ that year, and Alex and Ben were both assisting with the lighting. Sitting up there in the box, swivelling spotlights around to the right place and then spending a good portion of the time eating snacks and larking about, Ben had finally decided he couldn’t keep quiet any more.

“You have a little sister, right?” he asked, and Alex had looked sharply at him.

“Yeah?” he said. “Why?”

“I walk part of the way home with her,” Ben said, before colouring slightly. “I mean, not _with_ her. I see her walking on the same route. There’s us and a few others.”

“Alright,” Alex said, still looking at him.

“Do you know the other girls who walk that way?” Ben asked. “Sisters, one looks like she could be starting high school. Blonde. Matching Jigglypuff backpacks.”

Alex rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know them.”

“Well, they’re giving your sister hell.”

Looking back, Ben hadn’t spotted any sign at all that Alex was going to do what he was going to do. Alex had listened to the story with a frown, looking naturally upset at the thought of his sister being harassed in such a way, but there had been no serious display of anger. Mostly he had looked frustrated, rolling his eyes and calling the Johnson sisters a few choice names, wondering why Charlotte didn’t have anything better to do than pick on a ten-year-old. After that they had been needed for various tasks, and Ben didn’t think that much more about it.

A couple of days later Alex told his sister to get off a stop early and act like she was going to a friend’s house.

“Why?” Andrea asked, looking deeply suspicious.

“I can’t tell you,” Alex said neutrally. “Just do it, alright?”

It occurred to Andrea then, that word might have gotten back to him. She considered telling him not to bother, knowing that if she really didn’t want him to intervene, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t be _happy_ about it, but he would never step on her toes. She thought she probably should tell him not to, because really it was silly, and she didn’t want the Johnson sisters thinking she couldn’t fight her own battles – but at the same time she knew she wouldn’t do anything herself, because to do something would be to acknowledge how much it upset her, and at ten years old Andrea was very self-conscious about grand ideas like dignity and maturity. She didn’t want to end up in some pointless argument with the girls, especially when there were two of them and only one of her, and Charlotte Johnson had already demonstrated herself to be very good at punching.

So she shrugged, and the next day at school she got off a stop early, wandered towards some of the houses until the bus was out of sight, and then took her music player and went to sit in the park for a while.

Alex never told anybody what he did or said. Whatever it was, it was enough to send both girls home hysterical, and it was enough to send Fred Johnson around to the Kralie home absolutely murderous. He didn’t have many details himself – the girls were so terrified that they refused to tell him, he said – and Alex denied up and down that he knew anything about it. Andrea sat nervously, waiting to hear the whole thing inevitably come tumbling out, but Alex kept her secret. He just shrugged and deferred and yawned.

“I didn’t say anything to them,” he insisted. “I don’t know why they’re lying. I’m never there. I always have stuff to do after school.”

Graham Kralie had eventually said, as diplomatically as possible, that relations between the two families were frosty as it was and clearly they were getting nowhere; there was a slight insinuation that Graham knew his girls had a reputation for being brats so perhaps they weren’t as innocent as they seemed, and eventually with some stiff farewells and _yes we’ll talk to him_ s Graham bid Fred farewell through gritted teeth.

“You have better _hope_ you did nothing, Alexander Kralie,” he hissed at his son, who just shrugged again and wandered upstairs.

Amelia and Charlotte Johnson never looked in Andrea’s direction ever again.

**3.**

Alex grew up to be tall – six feet two inches tall, to be precise – and he grew up to be deceptively strong. He remained as lanky as he had always been, but it was a simple fact that he could haul around pounds upon pounds of stage equipment and set props, and scale a tree faster than a blink, and, when the mood struck him, throw one of his friends over his shoulder and run off with them. For this reason he never had cause to apply his strength to any kind of violent situation until college. People simply didn’t start anything with him, and if anyone was foolish enough to look like they were going to try, a brief whispered conversation with Alex – during which Alex seemed to do most of the talking – all while being forced to stand uncomfortably close to his considerable height usually did its job. Really, most people would just wonder why anyone had had beef with Alex anyway. General consensus in high school was that Alex was a great guy; one of those rare high school specimens who had genuine friends across every year and every clique, and who valued them all equally.

The first time Alex ever got into a proper fight, he was a freshman at college. A lot had changed already – he was no longer on speaking terms with his parents, for a start, having walked out on them at age sixteen and gone to live with his grandparents. There had only been four witnesses to that row – Katherine and Graham, Andrea, and of course Alex himself. Katherine and Graham refused to talk about it, Alex didn’t see the point, and Andrea had told her grandparents enough to let them guess this was probably going to be a permanent arrangement. It had been. Alex had not returned to his parents’ house since.

Now he was in college, and his natural tenacity and stubbornness was serving him well. On top of a full course load and extra credits to ensure he kept the many scholarships that were seeing him through his tuition, Alex worked two jobs – one in the college’s film department, assisting in the painstaking process of digitizing and cleaning up old tapes, and another significantly more terrible job at Applebee’s, where at least he had the company of Brian to keep things entertaining through the shifts, as well as a few of their newer friends – Tim Wright, one of Brian’s dormmates, and Jay Merrick, who coincidentally was both Alex’s roommate and in his film classes. The four of them often ended up closing together, which generally devolved into chaos of the highest degree, and it would be after one of these shifts that Alex found himself throwing down in an Applebee’s parking lot at just past midnight, which he insisted was perhaps the classiest thing he had ever done.

He hadn’t started it. He at least could put his hands up and say that he definitely hadn’t started it. However, he _had_ known it was going to go that way, because the second he had seen the group come in through the door he knew that they were going to be trouble, and that this was going to be trouble of a slightly different sort. Alex had seen plenty of them that night, being behind the bar and having to put up with their rowdiness; thankfully he wasn’t yet old enough to have to serve them the drinks, but he was still well within annoyance range.

Poor Jay had been their server that evening, and the whole thing had been about as disastrous as Alex expected. Alex was certain that he hadn’t fired the first shots, but he supposed he could have probably done a little more to mitigate things, to _not_ infuriate the local Neanderthals into waiting outside for several hours, though admittedly he didn’t know at first that they had done that. The facts were that this group were total assholes, and Jay was already exhausted and stressed out and really did not need this bullshit, and even if Jay had just been a roommate or an acquaintance Alex wouldn’t have stood for this. As it happened Jay was in actual fact his boyfriend, which added a new dimension to the whole thing, and try as he might to remember himself and also remind Jay that these people probably called everyone ‘faggot’, naturally it stung a bit more for Jay to hear it.

Alex definitely should not have made a point of kissing Jay when Jay had walked past on his way through to the back for a much needed break. He definitely should not have done that, but at the same time it was hardly his fault if these assholes were going to get offended at a quick peck on the lips. Not to mention there was the fact that they might be confident harassing someone who was barely five foot seven, but when Alex was the one to come over with their tab he noticed that like so many others, these men had vastly underestimated how tall he was.

“Here’s your check,” Alex said, throwing it down onto the table. “Pay it and fuck off.”

Perhaps the best thing about working at Applebee’s was that their manager could not give two shits about what his employees got up to, so long as it didn’t come back to him. Said manager wasn’t even present at the moment, despite the fact he was supposed to be there for closing and counting the safe – something that Alex or Brian did, taking it in turns to go through the painstaking process of checking and rechecking and recording the numbers – and even if he had been Alex didn’t think he would care too much about a bit of swearing, nor what happened next. Alex had noticed, at that moment, the glass on the table.

There was a single dollar bill underneath it, and the glass was filled with what looked like the dregs of everyone’s beers. The only way to remove it would be to lift it and send the liquid – which looked decidedly spitty – all over the table. Alex stared at it for a long moment, barely hearing the various comments from the patrons as to his rudeness and his sexuality and his mother’s profession, and then he sighed.

 _Only one thing for it,_ he thought, and then he reached out and swiped the glass right into the leader’s lap.

The table fell silent. Behind him, Alex heard Tim make a noise that sounded like a quickly strangled laugh. The upstanding patrons at the table were all looking in disbelief as the saliva-filled beer seeped through the front of their leader’s shorts.

“Pay up,” Alex said, “and _fuck off_. Cash or fucking credit?”

There had been an explosion of outrage at that point. They weren’t going to pay. They were going to knock his teeth in. They were going to kick his ass. They were going to beat his ass. Alex commented that all this talk about his ass was kind of gay, didn’t they think? They were going to smash his face in. They were _not_ going to pay. Who did he think he was? Did he know who they were? Why was he so up himself when he was waiting tables at an Applebee’s? He could go suck a dick. Alex said that sounded like a fun idea actually, and he probably would, just as soon as they paid their check and left. They wanted to speak to the damn manager. Alex was the damn manager. (He figured that if he was going to have to take on managerial duties, he might as well flaunt the authority as well.) Finally Alex told them that they could pay up and leave, or he would be locking the doors and calling the cops. He reckoned that at least one of them had to have weed on them, and just as he suspected the quieter one in the corner who had eaten his way through three entire burgers and an entire platter of garlic bread immediately paled and insisted they should just leave.

They paid up. They fucked off.

“Holy shit,” Brian said, leaning against the bar. “What a show.”

“We are not paid enough,” Alex grumbled, going back to scrubbing down the tables.

It was Alex’s turn to count the money, and therefore he was delayed for half an hour or so after his shift ended. Jay stayed with him, both out of solidarity and practicality – they lived together, and Alex had driven them here. Finally everything was in order, and Jay locked up while Alex went to bring the car around. He always parked it at the end of the lot, under the trees, where it might stay a little cooler; it took him maybe five minutes to walk back there, throw some food in the back to eat when they got in, and drive the car around to the front of the restaurant.

The lights had been switched off, just the overhead sign lit up, so it was only as Alex turned the car and the headlights swept across the front of the building that he realised the assholes were back. One of them, the stoned one, was standing a little way apart from the rest of the group, looking rather worried; the other three were gathered around Jay, and their leader – pants still soaked through with beer in a very unfortunate pattern – had him in a headlock.

Alex immediately felt very calm, which was always a bad sign. Still, he wasn’t going to do anything about it. These assholes were asking for it, and he had known it would come to this from the second he had seen them walk in through the door. He stopped the car and got out, leaving the door open, and walked quite casually across the short distance towards them. Jay looked worryingly red, his fingers clawing at the asshole’s arms and not making much headway; Alex ignored the other two and walked straight up to him, a slight smile on his face.

Whatever that smile looked like, it was enough to cause one of the others to double-take and step back.

Alex didn’t know what he was going to do. His hand seemed to act of its own free will. He reached out and grabbed the beer-soaked leader by a tight handful of his hair, feeling the copious amounts of gel in it crunching under his fingers. He held tight and then he _tugged_ , twisting his fist and pulling down; cursing, the asshole had no choice but to follow Alex’s hand, his head wrenched painfully to the side.

“Let the _fuck_ go of him,” Alex said. His voice was loud but not yelling; it was strangely level and dangerously calm. When the man didn’t immediately obey, he pulled his head further down, at an angle that had to be painful for his neck. “I said _let go_.”

Alex had the advantage of height – he was much taller than any of the rest of them, and it made for useful angles. He was able to hold the man tightly in place while remaining out of reach of any kicking or struggling; eventually the angle his neck was at must have won out, because he let go of Jay, and Alex didn’t think that logic would win any battles in this man’s head. Jay stumbled away, gasping, and the others were sensible enough to let him do so. Alex let go of the man’s hair and then promptly punched him in the balls. It was nasty hit, but drink and anger were powerful antidotes to pain; the asshole swung at him and Alex managed to duck out of the way, landing another punch to the crotch that finally caused him to double over. The third man had apparently finally remembered that when a friend is getting beaten up a person is obligated to help; he at least managed to glance a fist off Alex’s jaw, but drink softened the blow exponentially. Alex stuck a foot out, tripped him, grabbed him by a handful of his shirt as he fell, and swung him around and to the floor with enough force to tear the fabric.

The other two were no problem. The stoner was shaking his head as if to say _what did they expect?_ , and the other dude met Alex’s eye and actually raised his hands as if to say _hey, not my fault those two are idiots_.

Their leader was picking himself up again, still evidently in much discomfort, but angry enough to be capable of ignoring it. Alex folded his arms and stood, waiting patiently.

“Come on, then,” he eventually said, when nothing happened. “Thought you were going to knock my teeth in and do all manner of various things to my ass?”

“What the _fuck_ is your problem?” the asshole demanded, which Alex thought was a little unfair, all things considered.

He came at Alex then, apparently regaining some of his efficiency through anger. He missed the first hit, because Alex saw it coming a mile off, but the second punch landed deceptively quickly, and Alex felt blood on his lip, dripping from his nose. There was definitely something to be said for the fact that seeing your own blood awoke something in you; Alex launched himself at the other man with all the ferocity of a rabid animal, and within thirty seconds he was back on the floor, Alex shaking him around by another fistful of hair, not even really aware of what he had been yelling. He became aware of the fact he was yelling suddenly, but decided ultimately to roll with it; still shaking the man by the hair for emphasis, he used his other hand to punch him wherever he could reach.

“Are you going to fucking apologise?” he demanded. “Are you going to say you’re fucking sorry?”

“Fuck, man, _sorry_!” the man yelled back. “You’re a fucking psychopath!”

Alex let go of him and stepped back, rolling his shoulders, wiping the blood from his lower face. He was breathless, trembling with adrenaline, feeling simultaneously more wired than he had ever done in his life and also more terrified, too. That had been stupid, he realised. Running in there one against four, but what was he supposed to do? Ask them nicely to stop beating Jay up?

“You alright?” he asked, turning to Jay.

Jay was backed up against the car, pale, the skin on his throat still red and painful. Seeing it, Alex immediately let go of any concerns he had about his own behaviour. Jay nodded, went to speak, frowned and swallowed, then nodded again.

“Just get in the car,” Alex said, and turned back to the others. “If I see any of you around here again, I’ll fucking kill you. I’m not fucking around.”

That seemed to agitate their clueless leader enough that he looked as though he were about to say something; the other guy was picking himself up from the ground, wincing, and the stoner’s companion just shook his head.

“Leave it, man,” he said. “He’s crazy.”

Alex left them to pick themselves off the floor and stagger away. He got into the car and slammed the door, pulling away with enough speed that the tires screeched. He launched them across the parking lot, back around the side of the building and to the stop sign, and then he stopped and put the car in park and look a long breath, wiping at his nose again.

“Jesus,” he said, and Jay gave a strangled laugh. “Are you alright? Really?”

“It’s fine,” Jay croaked, rubbing a hand over his throat. “They didn’t, uh. They didn’t have time to do much else.”

“Good,” Alex said. “Hey, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you on your own. I probably shouldn’t have antagonised them so much, actually.”

“Nah, it’s—you’re bleeding.”

“I know.”

“Is it broken?”

“Nah. Didn’t even knock my glasses off properly. I’ll be fine.”

“I’ve never had anyone throw down over me before, you know.”

Alex laughed, and even Jay managed a smile.

“It kind of comes with the service,” Alex said. “Wait til you hear what I did to my sister’s bullies once.”

He told him, in great and dramatic detail, and by the time they pulled up behind the dorms Jay was smiling a little easier, even if he still periodically touched at the welt on his throat.

“Alex,” he said, as they got out of the car. “Remind me to never do anything to cross you.”

Alex laughed. “I don’t think you could if you tried.”

**4.**

It was for the best, he thought. He only did it because it was kinder; because he cared about them; because he didn’t want to see them suffer. He had watched it spread, person to person, none of them even aware of it aside from him. He had seen himself on those tapes, seen the figure lurking behind him, seen how he wandered at night and returned to bed covered in mud or rain or blood. He woke in the mornings remembering nothing, and if he hadn’t had the tapes he would have never known. No doubt it was happening to the others, too. He saw how tired they looked, how irritable they were, how spaced-out everyone had become. Tim grew sicker by the day, Brian fell asleep mid-sentence, and Jay forgot entire days that the two of them had spent together. Alex tried to stay away from them all, tried to keep it under control, but it had all gone so wrong so fast.

He hadn’t meant to kill Seth. He had only asked him along to keep hold of the camera. He didn’t think it would be dangerous – it was only his basement, but then it hadn’t been his basement, and Seth had been gone. Alex had spent several days bricking himself, waiting for the knock on the door, waiting for the police to state they knew he was the last person to have seen him. Alex hadn’t killed Seth with his bare hands (or at least, he didn’t remember doing so, and the camera hadn’t picked it up) but he could hardly explain what was actually going on to the cops, could he? He knew how it would look.

But nobody had come looking for Seth. The others had asked about him once, when Jay had shown up to man the cameras instead, but then they had all forgotten about him. Only Alex remembered, and that had been because of the tapes. Seth simply vanished, and nobody mentioned him again, and Alex did not see the tall man for weeks afterwards.

 _Alright_ , he thought, swallowing hard. _Alright. Maybe I can work with this._

It got bad again, worse than the last time, and Alex did what he had to do. There was no pleasure in it – no pleasure in leaving them all injured, leaving them for that thing to find. He did his best to kill them, and for the most part he was sure he had succeeded. He couldn’t be sure about Brian, because he had had to move so fast, but he was fairly certain that Tim hadn’t survived that blow to the head, and Sarah had been bleeding too much to live for long. Every time he had to do it, Alex spent days inside his house, half-mad with the panic, with the grief. How many more times was he going to have to do this? What other choice did he have? He had seen what it was doing to people. It was kinder, to kill them. What kind of life would they have otherwise? He would want them to do the same for him. He would understand. For the first time in his life he truly understood why love was such a cross to bear; why it was seen as such a force, and not necessarily one of good. Did it save him, to know that he had done these things only because he didn’t want his friends to suffer a worse fate? He thought it would make a decent philosophical argument, but it didn’t change the fact that when it came down to it, he was just a murderer.

He had hoped to god it wouldn’t come to that with Jay. They had been so close to getting away with it – so fucking close. Why Alex was going to give him the tapes he didn’t know, but he had almost let Jay walk out with them.

Then he had seen the figure at the window, the brief flash of movement as something too tall and too thin walked towards the front of the house, and Alex had launched himself through the door and onto Jay, and he hadn’t let himself think too much about what he was doing. He had left Jay unmoving on the ground, quickly rummaged through the tapes for all the more recent ones, and then he had left. He had gone back into the house only once, for the final few boxes and his car keys, and when he had returned to the car Jay’s body had been gone.

He told himself it was for the best, that it was the kindest thing to do. He told himself over and over, screaming it at himself as he drove out of town, but the fact remained that by the time he reached the town limits his legs were too weak to drive, and he pulled over at the side of the road and stumbled out onto the verge and he screamed and howled at the sky, at the unflinching trees, at everything and everyone that had driven him to this. He screamed until he throat was hoarse and his head pounded and there was nothing left in him to cry out, and then he sat numbly for hours, the chill seeping into him, his only comfort being that maybe, with the tapes gone, he would one day forget.

**5.**

When Amy found the camera, Alex knew his life was over.

The camera wasn’t even supposed to be there. He had thrown it into a dumpster on his way out of town, and foolishly he had supposed that would be the end of it. He tried to play it cool, tried to discourage her from it, but it was too late. Maybe if he had jumped up and ripped it from her hands and thrown it against the wall, it might have been better, but what would have been the point? As soon as Alex had felt the camera’s eye on him he knew it was no use trying to do anything other than accept the inevitable.

How the creature found him so quickly, Alex would never know. He had the distinct impression that this was the final piece in a much larger puzzle, one that had been assembling itself behind his back for some time. The camera had to come from somewhere, after all – Amy said she had found it in the closet, but it was hardly a closet that they never used. There were a few storage boxes, all of them open and not overly filled; Amy and Jessica kept all their coats and shoes in there, and Alex was in there often enough, digging out spare chargers or DVDs that had migrated to storage. He would have noticed a bulky camera the size of that one. He would have especially noticed the fact it was the very same one he used in college. Something had put it there, right in Amy’s line of sight; something had left a tape in there, made it so she could just switch it on and start recording. Alex had hoped for some time to come to terms with what was happening, to think of a plan, but it had happened too fast. Amy had turned away from him, annoyed that he was less than enthusiastic, and then she had screamed. It was a scream that Alex had never heard from her before, the kind that turned blood to ice. Even before he had reached her, he knew what he was going to see. He shoved her away and told her to run, and then for a moment he and the creature had simply faced one another, Alex more angry than scared, the creature with its blank head tilted curiously to one side.

“I’m not letting you have any of them,” Alex hissed, and then he had turned and followed Amy.

It was too late to do anything about the basics. If the creature was here they were all infected – Amy, Jessica, anybody that they came into contact with. Alex knew he had to move fast, he had to move ruthlessly, but how did he find that part of himself again? For years he had lived with the weight of all their lives on him – Brian and Tim and Seth and Sarah and Jay – and still it hadn’t been enough. There was only one thing he could possibly do now, and it was with a great effort that Alex forced himself to move, forced himself to stumble out after Amy as though he were just as confused and horrified as she was.

 _Her first,_ he thought grimly. _Then Jessica._

The final thought occurred to him with sudden clarity, both terrifying and welcome in its simplicity.

_Then yourself._

He didn’t have to live with it again.

Amy was hysterical, still holding the camera, still recording. Alex snatched it out of her hands and stopped it recording, though he didn’t throw it to the ground like he wished he could. He would need the tape. He would need to remember. He popped the tape out and shoved it in his pocket, keeping the camera in his hand as he cut through the back of the house, Amy stumbling after him, her breath coming in shuddering gasps.

“What was that thing?” she asked, over and over. “What was that thing? Did you see that? What _was_ that thing?”

“It’s alright,” Alex said mechanically. “Just. Calm down. It won’t come after us.”

“What _was_ it?” Amy asked. “What—”

“I don’t know,” Alex said. “I don’t know what it is, alright? Just calm down!”

They cut through to the street behind Amy and Jessica’s house, where Alex had left his car. They got in, Alex gripping the wheel tight enough that his knuckles were white, Amy huddled in the passenger seat, pale and teary. He could hear her ragged breathing, and he listened as the inevitable happened – the breaths becoming wheezy, the rattle in her chest. She was coughing violently by the time he pulled off the road, steering the car down a narrow access lane that was almost entirely overgrown, stopping only when the vague tracks ran out.

“Alex?” Amy asked quietly. “Where are we? What are you doing?”

“I need to get rid of the camera,” Alex said calmly. “I’m going to throw it out into the trees. I don’t want it in the house.”

“Is it—is that thing—connected to it?”

“I think so,” Alex said.

“I’m sorry,” Amy said quickly. “I’m sorry I was such an ass, I thought you were just being no fun and—”

“Amy,” Alex said, turning to her. “How were you supposed to know?”

She watched him for a moment, and then nodded.

“This is actually real?” she asked. “This is actually happening?”

Alex nodded.

“How?” she whispered. “How can something like this happen?”

“I don’t know,” Alex said, “but I’m going to figure out a way to stop it. Do you hear me? I’m not going to let it take you.”

She nodded again, letting out a shuddering breath that caught around the edges, making her cough again.

“Wait here,” he said. “I’m going to go throw the camera, and then we’ll find somewhere else to stay for the night. We’ll call Jessica and tell her to come meet us.”

“Alright,” she said shakily. “I—I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,” Alex said, opening the door. He paused. “Amy. I love you, alright?”

“I—I know,” she whispered.

He got out of the car and took the camera from the backseat. Glancing at Amy he saw she was sitting rigidly in the front, looking out through the windshield. She didn’t notice as Alex went around to the back of the car, opened the trunk, rummaged around in the bag there, found the gun. He hadn’t known why he had bought it. It had been a while ago now, shortly after leaving the first time, when the memories hadn’t been so decayed. He had hoped he would never have use for it.

Alex walked out a little way into the trees, paused for a moment, and then yelled for Amy. He hated himself as he did it, hated how easily he injected the fear into his voice, the desperation. Of course she came running; of course she was so concerned for him that she didn’t even register how strange it was to see him standing there waiting for her, his face perfectly blank. He only hoped she didn’t see the gun in his hand, either; didn’t notice it was raised, pointed right at her. The shot was a sharp crack in the silence of the forest, sending birds exploding out from the trees in a cacophony of squawks and beating wings. With shaking hands Alex lowered the gun, wiped his arm across his forehead. Then he stumbled past Amy’s body, forcing himself not to look, and went back to the car.

He didn’t remember the drive home. He came back to himself when he was pulling up outside his house, and it was all so frustratingly normal. In the basement apartment below his, the lights were already on, and he could hear the steady drum-beat of his neighbour’s music. He stumbled up the stairs and into his own apartment, hoping that he would just collapse onto his bed and pass out, but the second the door was closed behind him he was restless, claustrophobic. One question returned to him over and over: _how_?

Needing something to do, he booted up his laptop. He didn’t want to think, didn’t want to acknowledge this until he had no other choice. He could hear the shot over and over in the silence of the apartment, and he put the TV on a random channel, turning it up enough that downstairs his neighbour responded by turning her music up in kind. She was welcome to do it. Alex found some comfort in the noise coming from all sides, drowning out some of what he was still sure he could hear – Amy’s screams when she had turned into the hall, that gunshot, the shrieking birds.

He didn’t know what he was going to do online, not until he was already doing it. He was searching their names, all of them, plugging them into Google one by one, expecting to find nothing but not being able to commit to it. It seemed too simple – there had to be something here. There was nothing about Seth and Sarah and Brian, of course, and only a few mentions of Tim in regards to college things. He was listed as a graduate, and so was Jay, but Alex figured it was maybe a glitch or perhaps just a nice gesture, an honorary degree for some missing students nobody remembered.

Jay’s name came up more than that, though. Alex spotted him – or at least, someone else called Jay Merrick – in various places online, usually mentioned as credited for some freelance film work or editing job. Small things, but consistent – and recent. With a sinking feeling Alex considered the implications, and then he did something he never thought he would ever have cause to do: he put his own name into Google.

He had never wanted to see the results before, and he still didn’t now. Thinking about it, he assumed he had always known why that would be. His name registered far too many searches, all of them associated in some way with _Marble Hornets_. He was mentioned on forums, on Twitter, on various blogs and web pages. He was missing, apparently, and people were incredibly invested in the search for him. Said search seemed to centre around a YouTube channel of the same name as Alex’s long-abandoned film project, and while Alex knew what it was before he even clicked on it, there was still something absolutely unreal about seeing the channel load, seeing all those tiny thumbnails of stills he found he recognised. There weren’t many, and most of them were short – less than a minute in length. It did not take Alex long to watch them all.

For a long time after the final video had ended, Alex sat quite still, staring at the glare of his laptop screen until it went dark, then continuing to stare some more. The fear was there, and so was the anger, but they were secondary to something else – something heavy and consuming, something that settled into him with the kind of permeance that told Alex he would be carrying it around with him for the rest of his life.

Jay didn’t remember. Jay didn’t remember any of it – what they had been to one another, what Alex had done in the end. He had found the tapes and remembered Alex only as a college friend, maybe even just an acquaintance: someone who was nice enough, and who had clearly gone through something awful, and who had vanished. Jay was looking for him out of curiosity and concern, but look at everything that had happened! A person didn’t do that simply because they remembered an old college friend. Did Jay remember more than he let on, or was it something always present but that he had never bothered to question? The fact that Jay was out there, looking for him – Alex couldn’t understand it. Why would Jay care?

Somewhere Alex registered a dizzying relief at the fact that Jay was still alive, that he didn’t have to live with that blood on his hands after all. It didn’t do much to alleviate the rest of it, and certainly not the freshest of the blood, but it did something. Alex didn’t know what to think about that. Considering the way things were going, he thought it best not to dwell. It would, after all, only be a temporary change.

**6.**

Alex didn’t have any last words for Jay. He had plenty that he wanted to say, but it would be too much, or too little, and he had missed too many opportunities before. It was easier to end it now, end it quickly; he had hoped for something more like Amy, too quick for Jay to realise what was happening, but that hadn’t been how it worked.

“Alex?”

The way he had said his name, so disbelieving, so questioning; it was like a punch to the gut. In that moment Alex saw all the other times Jay had looked at him, all the other expressions he had seen on his face, so many of them much more welcome than this betrayed shock and all of them expressions he would never see again. Hearing Jay say his name, knowing he had seen him, that he knew what this meant – it was an unpleasant surprise, and the shot went wilder than Alex would have liked. It still met its target, but he had wanted to kill Jay instantly. That was not how it worked. There was enough time for Jay to realise what had happened, to be struck by the pain, to fumble for the wound and look in disbelief as the blood coated his fingers. Alex watched, curiously outside of his own body, hoping he never returned. When Jay finally stilled, he left.

The first time he had thought he’d killed Jay, he had screamed himself hoarse. This time there was nothing. The weight of it was too much for Alex to bear; whatever was left of him was crushed under it. It was a case of one action after the other, speeding on until the inevitable end, hoping to god that it came quickly. That was the thing about love, he supposed. It burned so hot and so bright that it was inevitable it would leave nothing behind.

**7.**

Alex had killed them out of mercy, out of love, out of understanding that there were fates worse than death. He had done what was necessary, knowing that it was a weight he would have to live with, that it was something nobody would understand. He had accepted that. He had known that. He didn’t need to be understood, or forgiven, or celebrated. He knew he had done evil, but then again he had always known that acts of love and acts of evil could often be one and the same.

When he died he died for hate. There was no love in what Tim did; there was nothing about Tim that told Alex he even regarded him as human anymore. That was alright. Alex understood. That was the hazard of such things. It was the only way that it could end. Tim wasn’t like him; wasn’t a bit like him at all. If he was going to do something like this, he would need to be hateful. He would need to be angry. It would protect him from what he had done; it was the best thing for them. Alex wondered if the weapon was one of convenience, or if Tim had deliberately chosen to go up against him with Jay’s old pocketknife. The most terrible thing was the fact that Alex knew if Jay was there, he would never use it himself. Most likely he would refuse to hand it over again.

The others had all died loved, in whatever fucked up way Alex could manage. They had died loved, and they had died safe, and if Alex had to die like this – bleeding out slowly, alone, hated – he could accept it. Despite everything, he knew it was what he deserved.


End file.
